And lastly… Doherty finally finds his voice

Given how Kelly Lamrock is “handling” the EFI issue, it might be that silence is the best strategy — from the perspective of a political party that thinks it might get a second chance at governing. Constituents begged to differ last fall, however — as they were destined to lose a university and our MLAs were curiously silent hoping, no doubt, that the pesky issue of UNBSJ would just go away.

I guess Minister Doherty now thinks its safe to speak. It’s almost 12 months since he was called to task by hundreds (thousands?) of citizens (i.e. voters) on the stoop of his uptown constituency office, and he has spoken loudly, if not clearly, about the resolve of his department to proceed full speed ahead with implementing the “Action Plan.” In “‘It’s time for action’; Education No more consultation, post-secondary plans are final, says minister in charge ” (Telegraph-Journal , 15 Jul 2008, Megan O’Toole) Doherty confirmed that the government intends to begin putting into effect some of the recommendations made by the presidents and principals committee, including program review, clarifying the “roles, missions and mandates” of the public universities — but the government will not increase funding to the extent recommended by the experts on this committee. So… no money, but lots of change — and no more debate.

I beg to differ. At this point, if the government is adhering to the timeline established by the Presidents and Principals, the process of reviewing the various university acts has begun and the department of PSE has sent its request to the department of justice for a draft(s) of the new legislation (see “Stages of a Public Bill,” Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick).

Once Justice has drafted the bill, it is returned to the minister who takes it to caucus for discussion. It would seem to me that since the politicians are debating the merits of the proposed changes, they should take into account the views of the people of New Brunswick — especially if people have concerns about the consequences of tinkering with the mission and mandate of their public universities.

I, for one, have several concerns about what a government that sees PSE as subservient to its political agenda might do to the acts. Why can’t the Liberals see that our universities have a mission, and that they must, continue in the pursuit of knowledge free from government control, as do other “real” universities in this nation. There is constantly talk in this province about meeting national and international standards; check out the mission statement of the University of Toronto and ask how we’ll compare once the politicians are done with us. Will we be able to claim, as does the U of T, that:

Within the unique university context, the most crucial of all human rights are the rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom, and freedom of research. And we affirm that these rights are meaningless unless they entail the right to raise deeply disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished beliefs of society at large and of the university itself.